With possibly the lowest entry costs of any business, the cleaning industry is continually squeezed on price, but companies such as Mid-American Cleaning Contractors are trying to provide better value in other ways, as Alan Swaby learns.
Bob Swan is the first to acknowledge that, unfortunately, many of the dedicated people providing the day-to-day services in the cleaning industry today don’t get the respect they deserve. “The nature of the business has the cleaning crews working the night shift while the client is out of the office, often leaving them faceless and unknown to customers. Couple that with the fact that cleaning seems to only get noticed when it is done poorly, and as a result customers are often neutral at best toward the janitorial staff,” he says.
Swan should know. As partner and vice president at Mid-American Cleaning Contractors (MACC), he has spent a lifetime cleaning up after others. You could almost say it’s in his blood, as both Swan’s father and grandfather were key players in the cleaning industry.
Since its formation through a management buyout in 1985, MACC’s business has grown from $2 million annually to $19 million, with a workforce of now more than 700. “We could have grown more quickly had we gone down the acquisition route,” says Swan, “but it’s a better fit with MACC’s business philosophy to organically grow our own client base. There’s no other business where the adage ‘You’re only as good as your last job’ applies more, and we want the last job a client has to be a MACC job. Tight control over systems and quality, leading-edge equipment and regular staff training are essential to our retaining customer confidence. Our present customers are our greatest asset, and our primary objective is to effectively service them.”
MACC currently has contracts to service more than 15 million square feet of space in 14 specialized industries. Its activities have now spilled over the Ohio border into Indiana, but the company feels no urgency to take on a wider geographical area right now. “There is still plenty of work for us to win close to home,” says Swan. “We continue to demonstrate to prospective customers that we understand their needs and can fulfill them efficiently and at a fair price. We’re more focused on solid growth than rapid growth.”
It’s a case of approaching things one job at a time. At one time MACC had no customers at all in the medical industry; now it’s an active player. Once in its history it had no really big contracts; now it has six Fortune 500 clients as well as many representatives of Ohio’s largest manufacturing, financial and university communities. “Getting the first contract of any kind is always the hardest,” says Swan. “The second and third come much easier.”
To demonstrate the importance of how the business is managed, MACC, headquartered in Lima, Ohio, proudly tells prospective customers about the Cleaning Industry Management Systems (CIMS) certification it achieved from ISSA, the leading trade association for the cleaning industry worldwide. “In 2007,” explains Swan, “ISSA invited cleaning companies to apply for its CIMS accreditation. Through the review process, applicants were narrowed down to 28 companies, of which just 17 were accredited. Of these, only five, including MACC, were accredited with honors.”
CIMS represents an important milestone in the development of the industry as it is the first time that those who actually do the cleaning can be measured. “Equipment and chemical manufacturers have long been subject to industry and quality standards,” says Swan, “but not so for the labor component. ISSA is pulling all the strings together in a drive to raise the professionalism of the business.”
CIMS-certified organizations have to demonstrate competence in five distinct areas: quality, service delivery, human resources, health & safety, and environmental stewardship. In fact, these days there is now a CIMS-Green Buildingcertification, which MACC also holds with honors. This additional distinction illustrates MACC’s commitment to delivering green and sustainable cleaning programs, which are vitally important to many companies today.
But at the end of the day, with well over 60 percent of costs associated with labor, everything depends on the individual actually doing the cleaning. Although late shifts and physically demanding work mean that the position of cleaner is seldom a job of preference, Swan is nevertheless continually amazed by the desire among his staff to do a good job.
“Potential employees don’t always come to us,” he admits, “sharing our idea of what constitutes acceptable standards of performance, but with proper training, good supervision, and a better understanding of what MACC expects, it never ceases to impress me what a good job our workers do.”
In fact, research shows that, in the right environments, people actually gain a considerable amount of job satisfaction and enjoy working in the cleaning business, a measure that is likely to rise if the discernible trend to more day cleaning continues and night work decreases.
“Traditionally,” says Swan, “cleaners have taken over when most of the personnel of the particular building have left for the day. The bulk of the work has been done late in the evening, with just a limited number of porters around during the day to keep a building in shape.”
Close analysis, though, is revealing that there are savings to be made by restricting cleaning work to those hours when the building will already be lit (day cleaning). Noisy or wet work still needs to be done when the least number of people are around, usually in the early morning between 5:30 and 7:00 am, but there is a considerable amount on non-obtrusive work that can be performed during normal business hours. Large purchasers of cleaning services, such as State Farm Insurance, have come to the conclusion that savings of 7 to 8 percent in lower energy costs can be expected by cutting out night-time work. There are also savings to be made by reducing the need for re-cleaning work carried out by the traditional building day attendants.
In the meantime, as part of its drive to push down costs and maximize work loading, MACC continues to pioneer the use of robotic floor scrubbers and vacuums, machines that, with precise programming, function without an operator, allowing manpower to be used elsewhere. And, of course, robots don’t need to have the lights on. www.macc.net
